Here in an Instant, Gone in a Flash
by cjborange
Summary: A series of one-shots, each exactly 100 words, and each one describing one of the tributes in the 74th Hunger Games. I'll be posting one chapter each day leading up to Christmas. Please tune in!
1. The 1 Girl

**Glimmer**

The eccentric Capitolites gawk as she struts onto the stage in the clear dress given to her by her stylist. Everyone loves her look. But she's fake. She's had plastic surgery dozens of times to erase wrinkles and plump sagging cheeks and appendages. She looks strong and healthy but she's just a pretty plastic shell around a broken girl. A broken girl who was bullied since elementary school for being "ugly". A girl who came home crying each day. The buzzing of the Tracker Jackers is the last thing she hears before the wasps overwhelm her and it's lights out.


	2. The 1 Boy

**Marvel**

Marvel watches as all of District 1's living victors take their seats beside the mayor. There are eight of them. Does he have the looks of the boy who won the forty-first? The charm of the girl that won the sixty-fourth? He's not sure, but the time is long gone for thoughts like those. He's always questioned where he stands in the eyes of his peers, but now he feels as if there's no questioning he's something more than just another 1 tribute. The Seam girl's arrow as it enters his torso is the end of more than his life.


	3. The 2 Girl

**Clove**

She wraps the belt of glittering throwing knives around her waist. She fires. She misses. She curses. She reaches for another knife. She throws. She misses. She rinses and repeats. Whatever happens, she's a girl who will never give up. It's been drilled into her brain since she could crawl—a 2 girl never gives up fighting, not even to protect her own life or that of her district partner. She screams as the 11 boy grabs her by either side of the neck and slams her against the cornucopia. Clove will never know the thrill of a battle again.


	4. The 2 Boy

**Cato**

Cato has been taught how to form himself into stone—never to feel, not even when the blade of his sword ends helpless lives. But a kind of skepticism has plagued him for years. Is it really right to be chopping down dummies and tributes like dominoes at his leisure when they're sent into the games at the last thing from leisure? The few moments before his death are the ones in which he lets out the thoughts that have been bottled inside of him like a volcano. The dogs maul him to shreds. At least he dies as himself.


	5. The 3 Girl

**Nettie**

The factories of 3 have turned Nettie into a robot. Day after day, year after year she slaves away tied to her workstation drilling mechanical parts into place. It's the only thing she's ever known. At least the games are a change from that. At lunch her and her partner sit together at the long table watched by a drove of peacekeepers. Just like the foul factories of home. The pain is indescribable as the 4 girl splits open her leg with her sword. She's so close to death she doesn't feel the 5 boy's blow that finishes her off.


	6. The 3 Boy

**Niko**

Run, or don't run? Hide, or don't hide? The games turn him into a wild animal who can't think any further than his survival in the immediate future. He makes his choices without thinking them over first. He avoids the sight of other tributes even it means risking his life. When the careers approach and ask for his help, he blurts out the word yes before he can stop himself. But he fails. The apples hit the mines and his fate is locked in place from there. Niko feels the 2 boy's cold hands and then the world tumbles away.


	7. The 4 Girl

**Sharka**

She wasn't supposed to volunteer into these games. She was supposed to volunteer into the seventy-third but panicked and dropped out at the last minute. The academy is willing to give her a second chance this year, but even so she's hesitant to leave behind the easy-going life in 4 she's always known. The pain of the Tracker Jackers closes its jaws around her like the shark her parents named her after, and she knows she's disappointed them all—the second year in a row. Her parents—and her whole district—will never see Sharka Nightengale wearing the Victor's Crown.


	8. The 4 Boy

**Bodhi**

Bodhi loves snorkeling. On days off he snorkels from dawn to dusk, and when he isn't training at the academy he gives lesson to his brothers. He loves the feeling of floating in the cold seawater, of floating from his body and leaving behind the hardships of life under President Snow's regime. He likes to imagine he can ride the waves to some place away from Panem, where his parents never have to go without to make sure he gets his share. He's the only career to die in the bloodbath; the ocean swells have carried him on at last.


	9. The 5 Girl

**Finch**

She's nearing sixteen but sprints through the forest as thin and wispy as a twelve-year-old, as quiet as a forest sprite. She steals and isn't caught. She sleeps until noon and isn't reprimanded by the people who run the power plant. But then the hunger sets in—deep, searing pain, like daggers being thrust into her flesh. She finds the star-crossed lovers from District 12. She scoops up the berries knowing they'll kill her. Finch will choose freedom at any cost, even death. In seconds the world is fading, and in seconds more it's gone—she's finally free once more.


	10. The 5 Boy

**Drew**

He's lived on the streets for the last five or so years of his life, and it's taught him one rule: the worst thing to do is to stand out from everyone else. It's funny how applicable it is to the games; his mentor urges him to flee from the get-go but he has other plans. He turns to run for that one pack, that one tiny orange pack in the corner of the cornucopia—but the seductive 1 girl reaches it first. Before he knows it there are two arrows in his back—the earsplitting screams are his last.


	11. The 6 Girl

**Tamora**

It's been her nervous habit as far back as she can remember to reach her hands to her hair and pull it into pigtails. Her clueless parents have been trying to stop the tic for years. Even Tamora's not sure why she does it, but she thinks of it as an "affectionate" reminder of home (in 6 it's pertinent to keep hair tight to avoid grime building up between the strands.) Why she wears her hair this way isn't certain, but it's her priority as the 1 boy's kukris pierce her chest to pull her curtain of hair in half.


	12. The 6 Boy

**Jason**

Sneaking out after curfew every night for years wasn't a good idea. It's no surprise when he's reaped for the games; by this point practically half the peacekeepers in 6 have a bone to pick with Jason in some way or another. Now that his death is on the horizon he vows to make up for all the mischief he's gotten into. In training he throws himself between the 2 boy and the 11 girl so that Cato gets mad at him instead of the twelve-year-old. Cato kills him first, like he promised: a noble way to depart this life.


	13. The 7 Girl

**Meredith**

"Anorexia," the doctor says with a clinical smoothness to his voice, a smoothness probably built up over years of telling people really upsetting things. The diagnosis takes Meredith aback. Sure, she's always been skinny, but it's not like it's ever taken a toll on her health, has it? It's not like she's ever skipped meals to keep her waistline thin, or thrown up to keep it from going to her thighs… oh wait. As the 2 girl charges toward her she gorges down a nearby loaf of bread—wanting just a moment of not caring what goes into her mouth.


	14. The 7 Boy

**Carvis**

Handsome face. Check. Warrior skills. Check. Everyone knows he's a candidate for the win the second they lay eyes on him, even Carvis himself. His arrogance has built up over years of living in the mansion house of 7 being washed with blank praise that makes him feel like he's standing on a pedestal. When he first enters the arena he knows this isn't going to be easy, and as he races toward the horn surrounded by screams he realizes how much these games are diminishing him. For the first time he's worth just as much as everyone else—nothing.


	15. The 8 Girl

**Savannah**

8 cringes as she's called to stage, screaming and crying into her sleeve. Tiny little Savannah Castillo doesn't stand a chance for the win. Even in school she was never any good—muddling up all her sums more often than not and having a certain incapability for listening to instructions whenever there was anything else on her mind, which, in 8, there always was. The cold hits her like a wall of poison, making her skin tingle in agony. She starts a fire, not realizing how close the careers are. And by striking the match she signs her death warrant.


	16. The 8 Boy

**Charle**

In District 8 they teach everybody to sew from an early age, and Charle catches on quickly—too quickly. By age five he's spinning thread into enormous quilts and jackets and all of the other things that bring warmth in the cold world of Panem. Not long after he's inventing his own designs. Everyone who meets him agrees he's nothing less than a child prodigy. But then thread runs low he has to take out tesserae, nearly a hundred of them. It's hardly a surprise when the escort reads his name. Too bad there aren't any needles in the cornucopia.


	17. The 9 Girl

**Lylith**

She was so drugged up she can hardly remember what happened that night under the blood moon. All she remembers is the snake-like voice of the Seer hissing out strange words in the language invented by her cult, the language used to communicate with the supernatural. The knife cuts her arm, drawing a stream of blood, and the Seer's expression turns grim. She's a witch. The girl remembers being dragged to a strange room surrounded by strange men and sentenced to death. The Hunger Games are the only thing that can save her and she volunteers into them without hesitating.


	18. The 9 Boy

**Tarun**

Tarun screams and kicks and cries as the peacekeepers drag him into the cell where he'll be spending the next twenty years. It was an accident, don't they understand it was an accident? He'd only drunk a little of the stolen beer, there were three others, and it wasn't even his car. Nobody had seen the family coming across the street until it was too late. It was an accident! An accident! His conduct was unwavering, his test scores were through the roof, but they don't listen to his pleads. All the peacekeepers listen to is the clatter of coin.


	19. The 10 Girl

**Susan**

Every morning she picks a new batch of flowers and puts them out on her balcony for the songbirds to munch on. She loves the birds more than anything in the world. But not just because they're pretty. She watches as they have their share and then fly away. Fly away over the tall iron fence that's kept her locked in the ranching town ever since she was born, without wings or any other mean of escape. "Fly away," she calls to them as they soar into the sky. "Fly away home." A tear rolls down her cheek every time.


	20. The 10 Boy

**Prongson**

He still remembers the pain of being grabbed by the bully and thrown against the cement. It was three years earlier but he still feels the agony as though it was ten seconds ago. Because it's the first time he truly realizes that's how it is for people like him. Why do they hate him for it? It's how God made him! One moment he's kissing his boyfriend under the stars after the school dance and the next moment it's pain and painkillers and ugly syringes and seated showers and he's just like, how is this a thing that happens?


	21. The 11 Girl

**Rue**

Lily: The beautiful dress her mother gives her the morning of the reaping.

Buttercup: the blossoms she sees in her garden just before she leaves.

Rose: the lips of the escort as they read her name.

Violet: The brilliant painted nails of her mentor. She's never seen an 11 citizen so colorful. Just like a flower.

Marigold: The flowers that surround her pedestal.

Orchid: The puffy white clouds of the arena.

Poppy: Her blood.

Sunflower: The horrible agony as it blossoms through her torso, consuming her being. She can already feel the world fading away.

Clover: Katniss' eyes. The afterlife.


	22. The 11 Boy

**Thresh**

Thresh plants seeds into soil day after day, year after year, and even though he's better off than most of 11 he can't help yearning for a better life. The fact that he'll be trapped in 11 for as long as he lives is infuriating, especially when he watches the birds soar where he cannot climb. It shows him how life his just one big lottery. The hand the universe deals you is the one you'll have to play with. But everything works out in the end. He has to believe it. The universe takes care of all its birds.


	23. The 12 Girl

**Katniss**

She still gets the nightmares twenty years after the fact. Primrose is 5, Dean (her late father's name) is barely 1, and she's pregnant with a third whose name she and Peeta haven't quite decided yet. She wakes up screaming and Peeta races into the room, asking what's wrong. Every night Katniss hears the way Rue screamed as Marvel's arrow entered her torso, the cries of the 3 boy as Cato snaps his neck like a toothpick. At her wedding Katniss leaves twenty-two empty chairs in the front row. Because she knows the dead will never truly leave the world.


	24. The 12 Boy

**Peeta**

It's been a whole year since he and Katniss re-watched their games. They do it annually to pay homage to the dead tributes, to the shadows their beings had on the great path of humanity. Watching the games they scream together and cry together. He knows it's his job to make good use of his turn in the spotlight of existence. He knows it's the duty of the living to bring dignity to the dead, to make the most of his life and to laugh and to smile and to make the world a better place from his having been.

 **A/N: Thank you all for reading this little story :D Have a great holiday!**


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